Mouflon Wild Sheep Ram with trophy horns. SCO 0935
The mouflon (Ovis orientalis orientalis group) is a subspecies group of the wild sheep Ovis orientalis. Populations of Ovis orientalis can be partitioned into the mouflons (orientalis group) and urials or arkars (vignei group). The mouflon is thought to be one of the two ancestors for all modern domestic sheep breeds It is red-brown with a dark back-stripe, light colored saddle patch and underparts. The males are horned, some females are horned while others lack horns. Mouflon have a shoulder height of about meters and a body weight of 250 kg (males) and 135 kg (females). Today mouflon occur in the Caucasus, in northern Iraq, and in northwestern Iran. Originally the range stretched further to Anatolia, the Crimean peninsula and the Balkans, where they had already disappeared 3,000 years ago. Mouflon were introduced onto the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Rhodes, and Cyprus during the neolithic period, perhaps as feral domesticated animals, where they have naturalized in the mountainous interiors of these islands over the past few thousand years, giving rise to the species known as European mouflon (O. orientalis musimon). They are now rare on the islands and classified as vulnerable by the IUCN.[5] They were later successfully introduced into central Europe, including Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, the Canary Islands, and even some northern European countries such as Finland. A small colony exists in the remote Kerguelen Islands. Since the 1980s, mouflon have also been successfully introduced into game ranches in North America for the purpose of hunting; however in game ranches pure breeds are rare as mouflon interbreed with domestic sheep and bighorn sheep SCO 0935
Size: 5380px × 3572px
Location: Wildlife Park Kincraig Speyside Inverness-shire Highland Region Scotland UK
Photo credit: © David Gowans / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: -stripe, ., agile, animalia, artiodactyla, autumn, bears, bovidae, breeds, caprinae, chordata, class:, colored, dark, family:, feeds, genus:, grass, habitat, hardy, heather, herbivore, herbivour, horn, kingdom:, light, line, male, mammal, mammalia, mating, meadows, mouflon, mountain, mountainous, multi-chambered, natural, nimble, order:, orientalis, ovis, patch, phylum:, places, red-brown, rocky, rut, saddle, season, sheep, short, shrubs, species:, steep, stomach, subfamily:, terrain, tree, ungulate, wolves
